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Trumpcare dead on arrival as president orders his own party to dump his flagship bill

Trumpcare dead on arrival as president orders his own party to dump his flagship bill

US House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan suddenly pulled the President Trump-backed bill to repeal and replace Obamacare in a last minute admission he was not able to whip the required 216 votes Friday afternoon.

A House leadership aide told Yahoo News that Trump asked Ryan to drop the vote.

The move was a rebuke to Trump, who threw his full endorsement to the bill in recent weeks and who’s staked his reputation on being a master negotiator.

The move also raises serious questions about how effective Ryan can be as speaker, and even arguably how long speakership is going to last.

Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., said Ryan’s message to the caucus was to take a breather from health care. Griffith said they’ll come back to the issue within the year.

When asked if he believed Congress would ever repeal Obamacare, Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., a moderate Republican who opposed the AHCA, said he didn’t know.

On Friday morning, House leadership made last minute changes to appeal to House Republicans’ conservative and moderate wings who were opposed to the package, the Affordable Health Care Act, but it wasn’t enough to win their support.

Members said they believe any vote would be a cliffhanger, as moderates and Freedom Caucus holdouts only increased in number as Friday went on.

With the crucial vote delayed, the blame game is likely to begin.

On Thursday night, Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s budget director, ratcheted up the pressure on Republicans, telling them to vote on the bill Friday or the White House would move on from the issue, leaving them “stuck with” the Affordable Care Act.


Trump has previously said he thinks the smartest political move would be to let Obamacare exchanges “fail” and then blame Democrats.

But Mulvaney’s message, as well as a tweet calling out the conservative Freedom Caucus on Friday morning, raised the possibility that the president would blame House Republicans, not Democrats, for the legislation falling short.

Ryan, in particular, may take heat, though members defended his leadership Friday. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said he would continue to back Ryan. “The speaker is a human being,” Barton said, who had to cope with the “diversity” of the GOP congress.

“Paul’s done everything he can,” Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., told Yahoo News before the vote was pulled. “That’s a very tough job. He’s worked harder than anybody I’ve seen,” echoed Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas.

Others are likely to question Trump’s hardball negotiation strategy of forcing a vote before the caucus was united. White House press secretary Sean Spicer brushed off that suggestion earlier in the day. He pointed out that the U.S. is “not a dictatorship.”